


Rebel Rebel

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hogwarts Era, Light Angst, Light Bowie, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Panic, Patronus, Underage Smoking, everything these two do is Heavy Bowie, who are we kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 14:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17061269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: In the mounting tension of 1975, before anybody knows what to be afraid of besides the vague threat of the future, what should be a shield feels instead like failure and plagues Remus with the sort of frustration he thought was behind him.





	Rebel Rebel

**** It is 1967 and Remus is flying. The broom between his hands is solid and well-loved, humming faintly with the magic carrying it aloft, his own magic, the flow of it coming from Remus’ little hands. His father is laughing from behind him as he steers them, low to the ground but aloft, alight, looping around the garden under the cover of night and the high shoulders of their hedges, and the air is whipping at his hair . He needs a haircut, but that doesn’t matter. He’s happy and he free and he’s  _ flying _ —

_ “Expecto patronum!” _

The words have the vague taste of metal on his tongue as it always does when he speaks magic words, his Muggle half doubtless making that happen for neither James nor Sirius have ever said anything about that side effect —Remus’ eyes are closed but he furrows his brow to put aside the thought, useless thought, he’s done his best not to let his usual predisposition for melancholic bullshit come with him to Order meetings because he has a  _ purpose _ now. Or least feels less pointless here in these halls, with these people _ —Shit. _ Remus’ wand shudders as he feels his magic ebb with that pang of sadness and so he doubles down, cycles the memory back into his mind, remembers what his father’s soap smells like, what the summer felt like on his face that moonless night, and grits his teeth with effort as he hears a few of the other Order members make sounds of interest at whatever is beginning to rattle its way into being at Remus’ wandtip.

“Very good, Mr. Lupin, you’ve almost got it.” Dumbledore’s voice is calming amid the swirl of anticipation and concentration roiling around inside of Remus, and so he tightens his grip and gives one last push of his emotions;  _ Da was laughing and so was mum. Mum had her hair up in that coily little twist she used to do, and she was watching and she was just as excited as I was to see, maybe even more _ —

“Oh, fucking  _ cool!” _

Remus opens his eyes when Benjy Fenwick breaks the tense silence with his shout into the cleared-out classroom. His heart pulls desperately with hope and pride all at once at the thought of not only being the first one among them to voluntarily attempt such a difficult charm, but being the first among them to  _ succeed  _ at it.

His vision focuses and his stomach drops.

Fluting from his wand in a silver pour like woven starlight, the unmistakable form of a wolf lopes in an arc through the air. Remus gasps so violently he nearly drops his wand and the beast dissolves, bursting apart, while the onlooking students smatter into applause with exclamations of surprise or awe and Remus falls deaf to anything besides the building roar of his pulse.

A wolf.

A  _ wolf. _

Remus flinches when a hand touches his shoulder and he spins to face its owner, his heart in his mouth as he looks up at Dumbledore. The man’s eyes are apologetic from behind his spectacles but he’s smiling, nodding that professorial nod of approval so at odds with the way Remus’ stomach is presently wrenching itself into knot after knot. “Well done, Remus. To summon a corporeal patronus is something to be proud of, you—”

“Thank you, professor,” Remus blurts jaggedly overtop of Dumbledore’s praise, lost in the mire of his own keening terror. The other students are talking among themselves excitedly,  _ What do you think mine might be? I want a centaur. You can’t have a Centaur, Prewett, those are basically people. What about dragons? How did he do that? _ All Remus wants to do is dissolve like that fucking creature that came from his wand, burst into a mist and disappear, at least for a moment. He needs to get out of here. He needs to be alone. 

Graceless, all knees and elbows, Remus shrugs away Dumbledore’s hand with an uneven lurch. It’s rude but he doesn’t care, his tongue won’t work around politesse right now. He spins on his heel and is struck for a moment, just a moment, by Sirius’ worried stare when he finds it by accident—silver like that bloody charm, protector, keeper, haven, riot—before he stumbles out of the classroom and out into the hallways at a dead run.

Remus lets his feet carry him wherever they need to while his lungs burn with the basal rush of a blank mind. Not the dormitory, not the astronomy tower, not even the lake, but to the edge of the grounds where the air turns to mist in what isn’t quite half-springtime yet. The covered bridge leading over to the sweeping fields to the western side yawns out emptily on either side of him when Remus parks himself at its center, sitting heavily to let his feet dangle over the shadowy ravine and shut his eyes when he presses his forehead to the stone strut before him. He latches back onto what scraps of his memory he can dredge up to try and quiet himself—humming magic, his father’s soap, his mother’s hair. He sucks in deep breaths,  _ one-two-three, one-two-three, _ and tries to hate himself just a bit less.

More than half an hour passes before Remus loses track of the feeling of minutes and resigns to listlessness. His pulse has finally quieted but the stolid squeeze of frustration persists at the root of his lungs. The charm that’s supposed to protect him from anything is wolf. He laughs bitterly into the quiet around him and stares, unseeing, down beyond the bridge.  _ Damn it to hell _ . He can’t believe the universe would serve him another slice of shit, as if what he’s dealing with isn’t enough, as if everything mounting around him and the people he cares about isn’t bloody  _ enough _ —

“Merlin, fucking  _ finally.” _

Remus looks up with a tug at his heart as Sirius’ voice approaches with the scuff of his worn boots alongside. From several paces away still Remus can see the faint pink of exertion high on his cheeks and just barely catches the last scrap of disquiet behind those steely irises before Sirius dispels it with the natural twist of an easy smile just a moment too late. He raises the folded map between two fingers and flutters it briefly before shoving it back into his robes. “You left our limit, I’ve been skimming the perimeter for twenty minutes.”

“Sorry,” Remus mumbles. He looks at back down at his feet and chews habitually at one of his cuticles as Sirius plops down beside him, fastidiously not watching the curve of Sirius’ knee in his jeans as the other boy shuffles his robes aside to match Remus’ seat with his feet hanging off the edge of the bridge. “Did Dumbledore cut the meeting early because I ran off?”

“Nah, I just came after you,” Sirius says in an easy sigh, naturally, as though it were obvious and plain and not the sort of statement that sets Remus’ maddened and aching heart a-tumble. It’s been this way for at least a year. Remus refuses to do anything about it, because maybe then the absurd and burgeoning desire for Sirius Black to take him apart brick by brick before slowly putting him back together again will go the fuck away.

Remus glances over at Sirius when he digs back into his robes to produce a cigarette and his wand in the same grab. He continues chewing at the edge of his finger. “Did anyone else manage the charm?”

“Dunno.” Sirius speaks with the cigarette held between his lips curled over his teeth and tosses out a little shrug as he carefully holds his wandtip up at its end to whisper the roll to alight. He returns his wand to his sleeve and takes his time on a drag while Remus watches him mildly and hopes to shit he isn’t staring. “I left pretty soon after you did,” Sirius explains on his exhale, “Couldn’t concentrate.”

“You sure you aren’t just bollocks at the spell?” Humor feels fresh in Remus’ heart and he’s grateful for the truth of the little smile that carves at his own lips when Sirius rolls his eyes and kicks gently at Remus’ foot beside his own.

“Fuck off. And quit chewing your finger, that’s a nasty habit.”

“You’re the one smoking, you twit.”

Sirius blows a plume of smoke in Remus’ face at that and he splutters, flailing instinctually in front of himself with both hands while Sirius breaks into a laugh that lights Remus up from top to tail. Remus ignores the shuddering warmth and scowls as Sirius takes another drag and watches him with a look that still carries the glimmering light of that laughter behind it. “Sorry,” he eventually admits.

“Apology accepted.”

Remus stares at his feet again because he doesn’t trust himself right now not to look at Sirius for just a moment too long, just a bit past the acceptable length of time one should spend on meaningful eye contact with their best mate. His nerves are sheared, uncapped, sawed off and fraying still from the bald shock of being reminded that Fate gives less than two shits about him, and Remus can’t handle more than one slam to his foundations in one day. Nonetheless one hour. And so he stares, and Sirius does him the courtesy of comfortable silence for about five minutes.

“For what it’s worth,” Sirius says as he flicks his finished cigarette butt into the ravine with signature uncaring grace, “I think it looked sort of more like a dog.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Sirius,” Remus says quickly, directly on the heels of Sirius’ words to shut the door before he can open it again. He waits until the white dot of the cigarette is completely gone from sight below before he steels himself and turns to Sirius, and Remus is wholly unprepared for the concerned tenderness he sees looking back at him. Whether by accident or on purpose, the magnitude with which Sirius wears his heart on his sleeve is consistently staggering to Remus.

“Alright. Can I just sit with you then?”

Remus blinks at the candor he hadn’t expected and nods before his mind can catch up with him. Sirius seems pacified and gives him a gentle smile, and at least three corners of Remus’ mind decide to shut off immediately for the inability to process the bolt of affection that suddenly stabs through his entire consciousness. “Please,” he manages to breathe.

To his credit, Sirius doesn’t press. He doesn’t ask any of his normal off-the-wall questions about nothing, he doesn’t launch into any of his normal one-man tangents, he doesn’t even sing to himself as he tends to in the dormitory—unless humming Bowie counts as singing. Remus feels unexpected and uncharted warmth take root in his chest when he recognizes the melody and begins to sing along in the back of his mind, a tiny smile of his own soon mirroring the one Sirius wears that Remus sees out of the corner of his eye when he accidentally catches the other boy looking at him fondly from underneath his eyelashes;

__ So what you wanna know,  
_ Calamity’s child? _ __   
__ Where’d you wanna go?  
_ What can I do for you?  
_ __ Looks like you’ve been there too...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this one!! Sorry for any typos or syntax weirdness, I blarped this one out after a pretty shitty day. Hopefully it makes your heart a little warmer as it did mine to write <3


End file.
